4 Malayali cricketers to play for India A teams in South Africa

Thursday, Jun 29, 2017,12:00 ISTBy joji AAA

New Delhi | Four cricketers of Kerala origin – Karun Nair, Shreyas Iyer, Sanju Samson and Basil Thampi – have been included in India A’s unofficial Test and one-day teams for the upcoming tour of South Africa.

Karun Nair will lead the Indian squad for four-day matches. He has also found place in the One-day squad. Shreyas Iyer will play in both formats of the game in South Africa, while Sanju Samson and Basil Thampi will play only in One-day matches.

Manish Pandey is the Indian skipper for the One-Day series.

India A will play a one-day tri-series involving Australia A and South Africa A followed by two four-day matches against the hosts.

The tour starts with the first one-dayer of the triangular series in Groenkloof on July 26 between India A and Australia A.

Karun and Jayant Yadav are two current India players who are in both the squads, while Pandey needed to be checked after coming from an injury.

The squad for the one-day series is packed with IPL and domestic limited-overs (Vijay Hazare Trophy) performers such as Krunal Pandya, Rishabh Pant, Basil Thampi, Mohammad Shiraj and Siddharth Kaul.

On the other hand, the team for the four-day (first class) matches is full of Ranji Trophy performers such as Priyank Panchal, the top-scorer in the season gone by, Ishan Kishan, Sudeep Chatterjee, Ankit Bawne and Shahbaz Nadeem.

Also part of the first class squad is senior India fringe player Abhinav Mukund.

Since India’s tour of Sri Lanka also starts on July 26, it is a given that Nair won’t be a part of the senior squad for the Test series.

Nair, who had started his Test career with a triple century on debut in the last home season, has since been going through a bad run of form, including in the Indian Premier League where he led Delhi Daredevils in some of the matches in the absence of regular skipper Zaheer Khan.